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Old 04-28-2020, 02:10 PM   #1
swiiscompos
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Default Complex video editing in Reaper - virtual choir example

I already posted that in the Music/Collaboration Discussion forum, but I think it deserve it's own post here. I very recently uploaded the video of this virtual choir and orchestra performance of Amazing Grace on YouTube. https://youtu.be/U1YMy10X5YQ It's comprised of more than a hundred videos that I had to combine together. The common sense would be to use a real video editor, but I don't have a graphic card that the editor could use, and neither did I want to buy an editor for this single project, so I decided to use Reaper.

I had to be smart about the workflow but I was surprised to see how capable Reaper was. Two workarounds I used however: the choir section was actually made in a first project so that I could load a single video for the whole choir (actually two because I had to cut the last line separately with handbrake since it is shorter and I didn't want to have black squares). To improve the performance I also had to mute most tracks (to hide them) so that I would only see what was needed at any time. Even this way there was often a consequent lag between when I moved the knobs in the video processor and when the change would appear in the preview window.

To create all the transitions I used simple automation. The great thing is that it was exactly the same workflow as when I work with audio! Sometimes, however I did wish there was a way to edit several automation lanes at the same time without using automation items! I almost exclusively used the "image overlay" script, except when I needed to rotate an image.

The most difficult part was fitting everything in the image since I don't know how to create a grid. I actually simply did this part by trying to imaging the position of all the different videos in my head first and then placing them. I was quite surprised to see it ended up ok!

In conclusion, Reaper is already an incredible video editor, definitely much better than I expected! Unfortunately the performance isn't great when working with many videos at the same time, or very big videos. If Reaper could use the graphic card power (and if I had one), it would become a very powerful video editor! I also hope smart guys will write more scripts for the video plugin, there are so many possibilities!
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Old 04-29-2020, 01:28 AM   #2
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It's nice to see that in fact it CAN be used to bigger projects !

I'm into comverting/editing my old standard 8 / Super 8 mm films to computer files and it was very nice to use for that "small" job.

But I know it can be used for bigger jobs too - thx !

BTW: A very nice arrangement in the current situation - thx there too !
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Old 04-29-2020, 08:08 AM   #3
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Great job Bernard. Good instrumentation skills! Just have 51 pro HORN players from 44 Countries to put in a tribute video with my arrangement, I did the timeadjusting plus sound mix in three full days ... Also around 100 tracks, 3.30'
How much time did you use for this (I know you were not that thorough with all the esses etc, but anyway!!!)?

Can you please explain us with which video presets and parameters you did:

1. align videos of different aspect ratios,
2. the animation of growth and schrimping,
3. create different forms of frames with videos in,
4. achieve that all these elements do not overlap and that they can be visible.

Thank you also if you just count all the presets you used, it'll spare a lot of time to me.

Here is a Screenshot of what I ask https://photos.app.goo.gl/oiT6y7m58NFx4LJr5
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Last edited by urednik; 04-29-2020 at 08:22 AM.
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Old 04-29-2020, 01:56 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by urednik View Post
Great job Bernard. Good instrumentation skills! Just have 51 pro HORN players from 44 Countries to put in a tribute video with my arrangement, I did the timeadjusting plus sound mix in three full days ... Also around 100 tracks, 3.30'
How much time did you use for this (I know you were not that thorough with all the esses etc, but anyway!!!)?

Can you please explain us with which video presets and parameters you did:

1. align videos of different aspect ratios,
2. the animation of growth and schrimping,
3. create different forms of frames with videos in,
4. achieve that all these elements do not overlap and that they can be visible.

Thank you also if you just count all the presets you used, it'll spare a lot of time to me.

Here is a Screenshot of what I ask https://photos.app.goo.gl/oiT6y7m58NFx4LJr5
How much time? I don't remember exactly but I think mixing took one or two days while the video editing took the rest of the week.

Here is my workflow for the video (some things I actually added after the fact but I should have added at the beginning:

1: I made sure that all the videos played correctly in Reaper. Otherwise I converted them to mp4. I also cropped to a square all the videos that were filmed in a vertical format using Movavi Converter, but Handbrake, while slower for that, could also work. I didn't do anything to videos that were already in a horizontal format.

2: I didn't do it in this order, but I should have : Add a track with the "image overlay" preset of the video processor on it. Create envelope tracks for the parameters: Zoom, X position, Y position, Opacity and a standard Mute automation. Duplicate this track as many times as you have videos.

3: Place one video per track, align them, lock the position of all the items.

4: Everything else I did was using the automation lanes. Growing/Schrimping was done using the Zoom parameter, the displacements were made using the X and Y position automation and the opacity changes using the Opacity parameter. Everytime I wanted to have a video disappear, I would mute it even if the opacity was at 0. This will save many resources.

5: To create different form of frames... well, I simply started placing a video, then placed the next one and moved the automation until it was perfectly aligned, then the next one, etc. I would also reorder the tracks to make sure they would hide each others in the order I wanted. But to make sure that each video had the right average side, I simply guessed it by doing quick maths and thinking how much space a single video had to take on screen to fit the correct number of lines and columns. The fact that I did a first video for the choir that I then used as a single entity in the final video project, gave me even more flexibility by allowing me to resize and move around easily the whole choir.

6: Bit time tip: If you convert all your videos so that they have the same size, you could then paste automation from one track to the next, or even use pooled automation items. I didn't do it, but I would certainly consider doing it if I had to redo it.

7: Another tip: If you need to convert the videos, use a high-quality preset. Because at least with my workflow some videos ended up being converted up to 4 times.
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Old 04-29-2020, 02:10 PM   #5
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One more thing, you will notice that the choir isn't actually a single video, the last row is independent from the rest. The reason for that is that it originally had less people, and I didn't want to have black boxes. So I exported a lossless AVI of the choir video project (as opposed to the general video project) and then I did two different cropped renders in Handbrake: one for the 5 first rows, and the other one for the last row.

The very convenient thing with that is that I had a few late submissions and I could just include them in the last row, without having to resize the rest of the choir. That's why people in the last choir row are now slightly smaller than the rest.
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Old 04-30-2020, 02:39 AM   #6
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Thanks Bernard,

as I see there is still no help in group editing with video. If that was possible (see the link with photo I posted) you could group align a bunch of videos and this would be much easier.

For example to have a section in the left corner, another one on the bottom line etc is impossible with help of parent track processor unless you edit position of each item individually, which is a lot of work and actually could be done easier if we would have the right tools.
Just checking if I got that right?

So is it up to developers to get such functionallity?
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Old 05-17-2020, 03:13 PM   #7
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I tried the produce a similar video, but Reaper became quite unresponsive at 28 video sources, even muting a video stopped working after a while. (i7 8gen 16GB RAM)

Last edited by briff; 05-17-2020 at 03:21 PM. Reason: Added computer config
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Old 05-18-2020, 09:44 AM   #8
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Thanks for sharing!
I'd like to add that if you apply Stretch Markers to the audio embedded in video tracks, video will follow smoothly.
This is gonna be useful if the performances where not so tight. I've just finished editing 10 kids on clarinets, and it just saved my day: put a lot of accents in their place, without ghosting or apparent crossfading on video.
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Old 05-20-2020, 05:08 AM   #9
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Default My new YouTube "How to make a Virtual Choir or Virtual Band Video in Reaper"

I've made code that makes this type of thing much easier assuming everyone is recording in landscape or everyone is recording in portrait by having automatic column and row numbers. You can now have big video in the grid, or expanded videos infront of or behind the gird and use automation etc.
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Old 05-21-2020, 02:24 AM   #10
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I've made code that makes this type of thing much easier assuming everyone is recording in landscape or everyone is recording in portrait by having automatic column and row numbers. You can now have big video in the grid, or expanded videos infront of or behind the gird and use automation etc.
Did you do anything to make Reaper work this well with that number of videos?
Above 20 video tracks my very recent computer started to hang, often became totally unresponsive. Even starting the rendering took many seconds, and it rendered well under 0.1x realtime.
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Old 05-21-2020, 05:46 AM   #11
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Did you do anything to make Reaper work this well with that number of videos?
Above 20 video tracks my very recent computer started to hang, often became totally unresponsive. Even starting the rendering took many seconds, and it rendered well under 0.1x realtime.
Depending on the power of your computer you can get problems with the video not keeping up for larger numbers of tracks with Reaper or playback glitching out. You can do mixing of audio with the video window closed to save on resources when concentrating on audio. When doing video automation, click the time cursor through the project to see how things are looking in the video window and you should get good quality results when rendering to video (slower than realtime if there are large numbers of videos). Some dedicated video editors like Final Cut Pro X etc. do background rendering to help but Reaper doesn't do that (and freezing a track doesn't preserve video in Reaper as of yet).
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Old 05-22-2020, 12:54 AM   #12
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Depending on the power of your computer you can get problems with the video not keeping up for larger numbers of tracks with Reaper or playback glitching out.
Could the source video encoding cause performance problems (too much resources needed on decoding the source)? May I ask what enconding did you have, did you do any conversion before mixing the videos in Reaper?
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Old 05-22-2020, 02:04 AM   #13
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Could the source video encoding cause performance problems (too much resources needed on decoding the source)? May I ask what enconding did you have, did you do any conversion before mixing the videos in Reaper?
The videos were dragged into Reaper with no prior editing. For me, the different video files used the codecs: "AAC, H.264" and "MPEG-4 SDSM, MPEG-4 ODSM, AAC, H.264" and "Linear PCM, H.264". I've no idea which codecs are easiest for which systems. The video I made ran fine for 6 videos with effects and stretch markers used for timing correction directly on the video tracks on my old MacBook Pro (2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 GB RAM) rendering 1.1 times real time. For large numbers of videos you get blocky playback of the video window etc. as I said. According to Jon at Reaper Blog you can improve performance by ignoring the audio on video tracks by going to Item>Item Properties>Properties>Ignore Audio. Presumably you would separate out the audio from the video track onto a separate track if needed (say by rendering the audio from a video).
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Old 05-23-2020, 12:20 AM   #14
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Originally Posted by swiiscompos View Post
I already posted that in the Music/Collaboration Discussion forum, but I think it deserve it's own post here. I very recently uploaded the video of this virtual choir and orchestra performance of Amazing Grace on YouTube. https://youtu.be/U1YMy10X5YQ
Great, I like it!
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Old 03-03-2021, 12:00 PM   #15
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Originally Posted by jak352 View Post
I've made code that makes this type of thing much easier assuming everyone is recording in landscape or everyone is recording in portrait by having automatic column and row numbers. You can now have big video in the grid, or expanded videos infront of or behind the gird and use automation etc.
How could this passed by me? Amazing!
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Old 03-05-2021, 06:40 AM   #16
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I've made code that makes this type of thing much easier assuming everyone is recording in landscape or everyone is recording in portrait by having automatic column and row numbers. You can now have big video in the grid, or expanded videos infront of or behind the gird and use automation etc.
Thank you so much for your tutorials! This is well-done and truly understandable. You need to start your own blog! Speaking of blogs what do you read? I'm into Rocketstock and Movavi blog. Do you have a favorite one?

Last edited by BrunoA; 03-08-2021 at 03:16 AM.
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